December 10 - 12, 2003, the first
meeting of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)
was held in Geneva, Switzerland. The WSIS was proposed at the 1998
meeting of the International Telecommunications
Union (ITU). The ITU is an
international organization under the auspices of the United Nations which is a
coordinating body for telecommunications issues around the globe. The WSIS was
devised to foster global discussion in regard to the developing information
society and to develop policy and action plans in support of the worldwide extension
of online technologies. There's
disagreement about whether this summit meeting was a success or
failure, but there's no doubt that the Internet stands at a crossroads
as it is poised to develop into a truly global network.

True to UN form, a "High-level Summit Organizing Committee" or HLSOC
was created under the aegis of the UN Secretary-General. It included
representatives from a number of UN agencies, including: FAO, IAEA, ICAO, ILO, IMO, ITU,
UNCTAD, UNDP, UNEP, UNESCO, UNHCR, UNIDO, UPU, WHO, WIPO, WMO. Lost in that alphabet
soup is the exclusion of ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
and Numbers. While ICANN is not a UN agency, it's hard to talk about the future of
the Internet without talking to or about ICANN.

ICANN?

In fact, the WSIS generated a bit of
controversy when all
non-governmental representatives (including media) were excluded from a pre-summit
planning meeting, including Paul Twomey, the president of ICANN. This is
particularly ironic, since ICANN itself has been the recipient of
criticism in regard to
its ability to represent all Internet
stake holders.

The development of the Internet has to date been very much driven by
U.S. interests. Internet technology was invented in the U.S. under
sponsorship of the Department of Defense and later of the National Science
Foundation. The commercial Internet bloomed with the advent of companies like
Amazon.com and eBay. So the question is how international is the
International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers?

ICANN was established to take over the Internet address registry
functions that previously had been provided by U.S. government agencies or their
agents. ICANN was supposed to be an independent body with an
international board that would see that addresses, the heart of the Internet's
operation, were equitably provided to those around the world who needed them.
ICANN was under contract to the U.S. government for the first two years of
its operation, but has operated independently since 2000. ICANN serves as
the registry agency for the .com, .net and .org hierarchies, but more
importantly runs the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which provides the numeric addresses which
make the names work.

So far, this coordination of numbers has included the country code
top-level domains like .uk, .au, and even .us, but each of those has
it's own registration organization for its names. The question is, does
ICANN wield too much power over the Internet. This may be a more important
question outside the U.S., since the U.S. government sees the Internet
as something to be coordinated by the private sector. This model,
however, may not be useful to parts of the world where the public good is seen
as coming from the public rather than private sector.

Principles and a plan of action

Out of the first WSIS meeting came a statement of principles and a
plan of action. Among the principles was a "challenge is to harness the
potential of information and communication technology to promote the development
goals of the Millennium Declaration, namely the eradication of extreme
poverty and hunger; achievement of universal primary education;
promotion of gender equality and empowerment of women; reduction of child
mortality; improvement of maternal health; to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other
diseases; ensuring environmental sustainability; and development of
global partnerships for development for the attainment of a more peaceful,
just and prosperous world."

The "Plan of Action" included a number of e-objectives such as
e-literacy, e-government, e-business, e-learning, and e-health, e-employment, and
e-environment, but while the "what" is well defined, the "how" is left
undefined. The "who" seems obvious: "National e-strategies should be
made an integral part of national development plans, including Poverty
Reduction Strategies."

The question remains as to how Internet technologies will be extended
to parts of the world where there is overwhelming private sector
interest. If we indeed wish to achieve the goals set forth by the WSIS, it will
take cooperation and support at all levels. I just hope the world is not
faced with the question, "is it possible to do good without a profit
motive?"